Drew Barrymore, who revealed on her talk show last month that she can go “years” without sex, now admits her sexless streak is in its sixth year.
“I’m not a person who needs sex and has to go out there and engage with people on that level,” the actor wrote in a blog post published on Sunday.
“I am someone who is deeply committed to fostering how young girls, my daughters, and myself as a woman, are supposed to function in this world!”
Drew, who shares two daughters with Will Kopelman, said she hasn’t been intimate since their divorce in 2016.
“Some people can get out of a marriage or relationship and in the near future find themselves in another relationship,” she wrote. “There is nothing wrong with that! Not one bit. I do not judge! I celebrate their journey! Because for some people that really works. It didn’t work for me.”
Drew famously navigated the pitfalls of child stardom to become a Hollywood icon. She wrote that she has “very different feelings about intimacy than I did growing up” and is now very clear that “love and sex are not the same thing.” She “engaged in grown up ways since a tender age,” she said, because she “did not have role model parents.”
In younger years, Drew said she prioritised pleasure and “hedonism.” But after “a very rich, full life,” she takes joy in parenting her children, ages 10 and 8.
“Since entering life as a single mom, I have not been able to have an intimate relationship,” she added. “I have had the honour and a pleasure to actually work on myself and learn what parenting is.”
Drew recently had a teary reunion with ex-boyfriend Justin Long 12 years after they broke up. He said he’ll always love her; Drew admitted they “had so much fun.”
Justin married Vogue’s director of fashion development, Alexandra Michler, last year.
Drew wrote that she was most interested in teaching her daughters how “to love themselves,” and that an intimate sexual relationship might get in the way.
Still, she assured readers she’s definitely not anti-sex.
“So for the record, I do not hate sex!” she wrote. “I have just finally come to the epiphany that love and sex are simply not the same thing. I searched my whole life for, which is to be a calm woman and not a bombastic party girl.”